The Acer Aspire S5 brings a professional look and great keyboard to the …

Acer announced the Aspire S5 ultrabook and Iconia Tab A200 tablet at CES this week. The S5 carries definite improvements over Acer’s first ultrabook release, the Aspire S3, and the A200 tablet hits a very reasonable price point for its capabilities.

Acer Aspire S5

The S5 is an entirely black model, giving it a more professional look than the lighter, rounded S3.

As the “thinnest ultrabook ever,” the 2.97-pound 13-inch S5 stands only 15 millimeters high when closed. The power button is located on the left-hand side and evokes a sleep button on a tablet or smartphone. The trackpad on the S5 seemed a little overactive to touch, interpreting tiny brushes as taps; we had to be a little more deliberate than usual about lowering our fingers toward it.

The keyboard on the S3 was among the best we’ve tried among ultrabooks, but the S5 is much improved, with clickier keys and much more depth to the key wells. We’ve noticed an across-the-board improvement in key travel in several of the ultrabooks we’ve tried, which is a very welcome change.

The MagicFlip button. Professionally Tuned.

Behold, the ports that the A5 lifts up to reveal.

One of the more unique things about the S5 is that, when the “MagicFlip” button above the keyboard is pushed, the chassis will lift about half an inch to expose a range of ports in the back: HDMI, 2 USB 3.0, and a Thunderbolt port. An Acer representative told Ars that the lifting mechanism inside the S5 can lift up to 50 pounds. Lacking a correctly weighted item to test with, we didn’t get to verify these claims firsthand.

The Acer Aspire S5 lifts to reveal ports

It was difficult to get a handle on the color quality of the S5’s screen, but the screen appeared to be lit evenly. Like the S3, the S5 had a very stiff hinge and couldn’t be opened without either prying the two halves open or trying to pin the lower half down on the table.

Acer Iconia Tab A200

The Iconia Tab A200 feels very similar to a newer Galaxy Tab model, with rounded long edges, cutoff short edges, and a slightly curved plastic back. It felt heavy for its size, with a 10.1-inch screen and 16:10 aspect ratio. Given its price, however, we’d be willing to put up what that little bit of extra weight.

Acer’s reps told Ars that the A200 was running Android 3.2, but when we investigated the About page, the listed OS was Android version 4.0.1. Inside, the final model will have a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB or 16GB of storage expandable by microSD card. We found the tablet opened applications smoothly and was very responsive with the newer OS. Acer has added a small circle icon to the menu bar that, when tapped, brings up a wheel of favorite apps and items for easy access. This seems redundant with the availability of the home screen, which could hold a boodle of icons even with the giant clock and weather widget.

Acer's wheel of easily accessible items

All of the A200’s ports are on its short ends: the headphone jack, microUSB, and USB are on one side, and power port on the other. Ports on tablets are often bad news for thinness, but even with USB, the A200 isn’t too thick. Those ports sit next to the sleep button, while a lock switch and volume rocker are on one of the long sides.

An assemblage of devices that can access Acer's AcerCloud.

AcerCloud

The company's new AcerCloud service uses an Acer computer as a hub to host files that users can access on devices like tablets and smartphones (the devices don’t need to be Acer-made to access the service). Within the sharing apps on the smartphone and tablet, we could both stream and download music for playing offline. Acer plans to market the new S5 with the slogan “Always Connect;" this, it turns out, means the host computer must wake up in order to serve you whenever you access a song via AcerCloud on your device (though reps say the screen will not turn on when it does so).

This will make all but the most desk-bound of notebooks an unreliable host for cloud services, and since Acer doesn’t make many desktops, this will be an inconvenient thing to think about when relying on AcerCloud. On the upside, unlike Apple's iCloud, you have as much storage space to work with as exists on your host computer.

The Iconia Tab A200 launches January 15 at $329 for the 8GB model, and $349 for the 16GB version. The tablet will run Android 3.2 at launch, but Acer is projecting an update to Android 4 for mid-February. The Aspire S5 has no projected price yet, but is set for a second-quarter launch this year.

The laptop ports idea is great, they are there for when you need them, but fold away for the ultra-thin portability factor when you don't need to use them..

About the first photo.. I love you Casey, but the flash washout makes it very hard to appreciate the screen quality, although it does show it has an excellent AR coating. Look through the Apple reviews and it's hard to find a screen shot that's not a glamor shot with good lighting for the display.

I don't see why Windows laptop makers are worrying about Ultrabooks when even their basic laptops aren't anywhere near the build quality of a 2008 Macbook, much less a Macbook Air.

I have a $2000 HP laptop from work, and while it may have a gee-whiz processor and screen, it's otherwise a piece of junk. The product managers at these billion dollar companies must be kids out of high school. "Oooh, add another USB port, two more crapware programs which are totally different in look and feel from everything else we do, upgrade the processor and bang! It's a brand new model!"

I use Windows all day, every day. On desktops I guess I generally don't notice the hardware very much since I use a keyboard, mouse, and monitor that I like, and the case sits mostly untouched in the corner. But obviously a laptop is more hands-on.

Why, for example, does HP, with a market capitalization in the billions, ship laptops with crappy Synaptics drivers? Doing anything beyond simple point-and-click with the trackpad is very difficult. I like to scroll with the trackpad, but half the time it thinks I'm trying to move the pointer to the side of the screen. Oh, yes, the Synaptics control panel is full of settings, most of which are underdocumented and useless to most people. Except for the one buried five levels deep that a forum post from 2009 suggests will fix one of your problems.

I don't expect these companies to suddenly become like Apple. But I don't understand why they won't hire the sort of people who would look at the products they're shipping and come to the obvious conclusion that half of them should be cancelled and the other half need a lot more polish.

My GF needed something light for traveling and ended up getting the Acer Timeline X 11" with an i7 inside. 3lbs, less than an inch thick, 6-7 hour battery life and was around $600. Only had it about a week but so far so good and based on what I've seen on laptop forums, the long term owners are still more or less happy with it.

The laptop ports idea is great, they are there for when you need them, but fold away for the ultra-thin portability factor when you don't need to use them..

About the first photo.. I love you Casey, but the flash washout makes it very hard to appreciate the screen quality, although it does show it has an excellent AR coating. Look through the Apple reviews and it's hard to find a screen shot that's not a glamor shot with good lighting for the display.

Sorry about that, I hope you'll understand these are photos in suboptimal conditions that have to be taken in a limited amount of time. Photography time trials! It's not meant to show the quality of the screen, more so the front-facing form factor. If I were a Professional Photog, I might have been able to get the screen to balance beautifully with the rest of the lighting even working in that situation, but I'm not there yet

The laptop ports idea is great, they are there for when you need them, but fold away for the ultra-thin portability factor when you don't need to use them..

About the first photo.. I love you Casey, but the flash washout makes it very hard to appreciate the screen quality, although it does show it has an excellent AR coating. Look through the Apple reviews and it's hard to find a screen shot that's not a glamor shot with good lighting for the display.

Sorry about that, I hope you'll understand these are photos in suboptimal conditions that have to be taken in a limited amount of time. Photography time trials! It's not meant to show the quality of the screen, more so the front-facing form factor. If I were a Professional Photog, I might have been able to get the screen to balance beautifully with the rest of the lighting even working in that situation, but I'm not there yet

Casey..while I do appreciate the work that you are doing to bring us more Non-Apple reviews ( and doing a great job at that! ); may I also extend the 'photo capture' criticism to your reviews of Android and Windows smartphones which mostly look very 'unglamarous'.. Almost all the reviews make the newer phones look much 'fatter' or 'bulkier' than what they really are ( because of the angle at which they are taken! ) and the phones look dull ; even though some of these newer HTC/SONY/Motorola or Nokia are all awesome piece of work and a nice change from the same iPHONE design we have all got used to ( I am an iPHONE user myself! )

Also ..why is that your name is never highlighted in color ( orange ) when you make a post in the ARS Comment section ?

Why, for example, does HP, with a market capitalization in the billions, ship laptops with crappy Synaptics drivers? Doing anything beyond simple point-and-click with the trackpad is very difficult. I like to scroll with the trackpad, but half the time it thinks I'm trying to move the pointer to the side of the screen. Oh, yes, the Synaptics control panel is full of settings, most of which are underdocumented and useless to most people. Except for the one buried five levels deep that a forum post from 2009 suggests will fix one of your problems.

Dear Lord above, THIS. I use an Elitebook at work and it's terrible to control. What bugs me even more are all the phantom clicks and double-clicks it insists on. It's scary how often I have sent an unfinished message, closed a page I needed open, made an odd edit. Really too bad because it is otherwise not a bad little laptop. But damn, that trackpad's behaviour is as bad as my old Acer Aspire One's awful one. Synaptics must die.

Why in the name of God would you print "Professionally Tuned" on your laptop? The only product that should have "professionally tuned" on it is a grand fucking piano.

Yup. Wouldn't buy this laptop for that single reason. Putting something like that on a laptop is a clear attempt at bullshitting non-savvy customer which suggest the company is not honest so who knows what else is wrong with their products .

Why, for example, does HP, with a market capitalization in the billions, ship laptops with crappy Synaptics drivers? Doing anything beyond simple point-and-click with the trackpad is very difficult. I like to scroll with the trackpad, but half the time it thinks I'm trying to move the pointer to the side of the screen. Oh, yes, the Synaptics control panel is full of settings, most of which are underdocumented and useless to most people. Except for the one buried five levels deep that a forum post from 2009 suggests will fix one of your problems.

I don't expect these companies to suddenly become like Apple. But I don't understand why they won't hire the sort of people who would look at the products they're shipping and come to the obvious conclusion that half of them should be cancelled and the other half need a lot more polish.

It is their corporate culture. They are very very resistant to anything that is different from what they are already doing. For the few years that I was there, it struck me as if they are playing "not to lose" as opposed to playing "to win."

Why, for example, does HP, with a market capitalization in the billions, ship laptops with crappy Synaptics drivers? Doing anything beyond simple point-and-click with the trackpad is very difficult. I like to scroll with the trackpad, but half the time it thinks I'm trying to move the pointer to the side of the screen. Oh, yes, the Synaptics control panel is full of settings, most of which are underdocumented and useless to most people. Except for the one buried five levels deep that a forum post from 2009 suggests will fix one of your problems.

I don't expect these companies to suddenly become like Apple. But I don't understand why they won't hire the sort of people who would look at the products they're shipping and come to the obvious conclusion that half of them should be cancelled and the other half need a lot more polish.

It is their corporate culture. They are very very resistant to anything that is different from what they are already doing. For the few years that I was there, it struck me as if they are playing "not to lose" as opposed to playing "to win."

Of course this is their approach. These windows PCs are themselves sold to corporations who want as little change as possible, only give them their customers all the settings so that users can fix everything themselves. From my experience, never use the scrolling 'regions' if you have multi touch, dial the sensitivity down and never use click'n'drag. Or just carry a mouse, which is what Corporate America actually does.

If I were a Professional Photog, I might have been able to get the screen to balance beautifully with the rest of the lighting even working in that situation, but I'm not there yet

Only if they were allowed to rig up the lighting to suit their photo, so basically not. I think you're doing a very good job with the photographs (certainly better than some of the more, er, 'artistic' attempts I've seen on Ars). And while the pictures may not make the devices look glamorous, they do a decent job of showing what they actually look like (some marketing shots remind me of the pictures you get in burger joints...)